A Masterly Hand / Scientia Artis 9

277 276 *  Conservator, The Metropolitan Museum of Art – The Cloisters, New York. 15 The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s St Roch: Looking at Artistic Workshops Around the ‘Master of Elsloo’ Lucretia Kargère * The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York owns a standing figure of St Roch (oak, 98.5 ≈ 41.5 ≈ 28.5  cm) (fig. 15.1). Far removed from its original surroundings, the wooden sculpture lacks a solid attribution despite an article written in 2000 linking the figure to the school of carving in Kalkar, a town in the Lower Rhine region of Germany, near the Dutch bor der. 1 Alt hough the precise provenance is unknown the stylistic and technical examination of the New York St Roch can add an extra dimension to the study of the sculptors grouped under the name of the Master of Elsloo, whose circle of influence remains challenging. This article will compare the materials and techniques of the New York sculpture to another wooden figure of St Roch attributed to the Master of Elsloo and displayed in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tours (oak, 100 ≈ 34 ≈ 25.5  cm) (fig. 15.2). In addition to showing clear analogies in ­ appearance, this association will also highlight the more specific stylistic and technical distinctions between these two works of art and will characterise the intricacy of identifying provenance for sculptures produced within close geographic proximity in the early sixteenth century. Provenance and Date: State of the Question The Metropolitan Museum’s St Roch was purchased in 1906 by the banker- financier John Pierpont Mor gan. 2 It had belonged to George Hoentschel, a prominent collector in Paris, who had acquired it in October 1904 in Cologne at the sale of the Bourgeois Frères collect ion. 3 In that sale catalogue the figure was described as Flemish and dating from around 1 500. 4 D isplayed for two years (1908-1910) in an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as the work of an unknown Flemish sculptor, it was finally bequeathed to the museum in 1 916. 5 In 1945 William Forsyth, curator of Medieval Art, shifted the Museum’s St Roch across geographic borders, referring to other figures of saints that were associated with schools of the duchy of Guelders in the eastern Netherlands and the city of Cleves in the Lower Rhine region of Germany. Notably, he made reference to three sculptures of saints in the Aartsbisschoppelijk Museum in Utrecht (the collection is now in the Museum Catharijneconv ent). 6 In 1990 an exhibition in Sint-Truiden on late-Gothic sculpture from Limburg and its periphery compared the New York St Roch to another St Roch in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tours attributed to the Master of Els loo. 7 Ac cording to the Fig. 15.1 St Roch, oak, 98.5 x 41.5 x 28.5 cm, Lower Rhine region, early 16th century, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 16.32.186 Fig. 15.2 St Roch, Tours, Musée des Beaux-Arts, inv. 1973-3-9 15.2